If you want to ensure that you get headaches, then do this: be a soda pop (sugar and caffeine) addict and then quit cold turkey. The next day or two your head will hurt something awful. Holding a cold pack to it can help relieve the throbbing pain. Headaches are the worst!

Indeed, people who eat a lot of junk food and drink a lot of pop can be depriving themselves of magnesium. Sugary drinks with fizz often contain phosphoric acid, which ends up binding calcium and magnesium in the intestinal tract. When this happens, you get muscle tension and…

Have you ever found yourself sitting at the computer for hours on end, barely moving? This happens to a lot of us. We get so entranced with what’s on the screen that we don’t move our bodies at all, for hours and hours at a time. Guess what happens? You get neck pain. The best advice for a person who spends a lot of time either looking at a computer screen, TV screen or smartphone is this: don’t allow yourself to become so “frozen” in one spot for too long. Instead, remember to move your head side-to-side and up-and-down…

What are some of the things you’ll have a hard time doing when you’ve got chronic low back pain? For starters, it can be hard to get in and out of bed. You might need to grab something nearby to help push yourself up. Anytime your lower back is hurting, you’ll find yourself wanting to grab something/anything for support. You might need to lean against the wall sometimes just to stay upright, while giving yourself some temporary relief. Meanwhile, besides getting in and out of bed, the other major problem will be getting in and out of a vehicle….

People with chronic pain usually try a lot of things to get rid of their pain. For peripheral neuropathy, where they’ve got a persistent feeling of numbness, weakness and/or pain in their hands or feet, they may try a medication for relief. Typically, they take Gabapentin, also known as Neurotonin. This is an anticonvulsant drug that’s commonly prescribed for nerve pain. Does it work? Meh. It may provide mild relief, but consider the side effects: fatigue, memory loss, foggy thinking, etc. Is it worth it? Probably not!

Does your current diet consist of sugary snacks and sodas? If so, you could be “pre-diabetic” and/or have type 2 diabetes. Sugar and insulin are two key components that ultimately determine whether or not you’re diabetic.

Your pancreas makes a hormone called insulin. This hormone takes the sugar from the carbs in the food you eat and turns it into energy for your body’s various cells. What’s not needed right away gets stored for future use. Insulin is the great regulator– it helps your body keep a good blood sugar level, ideally. However, suppose you eat a very sugary diet,…

Thanks to ads on TV in recent times, more and more people know what IBS stands for: irritable bowel syndrome. Basically, IBS involves abdominal pain and changes in the pattern of a person’s bowel movements whereas diarrhea and constipation can be common. Generally, people with IBS complain that it messes with their daily lives, because they either have to worry about the messiness and grossness of diarrhea, or the intense pain and pushing of constipation. People with IBS typically have other problems at the same time, such as anxiety and depression. They can also feel chronically fatigued. When a…

A woman’s menstrual cycle involves the uterus lining getting thicker to prepare for a fertilized egg– if the woman becomes pregnant. When the egg isn’t fertilized, that lining is released from the body. It comes out as blood through the vagina, and this process is called menstruation or a “period.” It typically happens once a month until a woman gets to a certain age (usually between ages 45 and 55) when she’s no longer fertile. The bleeding can last 2 to 7 days.

Why do some women get “heavy periods” where the bleeding is unusually intense? There are five reasons…

Crohn’s disease involves the inflammation of a person’s bowels. It can affect parts of the gastrointestinal tract and typical symptoms include abdominal pain, bloody diarrhea, fever and weight loss. The cause of Crohn’s is unknown, but it’s thought to be a genetically inherited disease, especially for people with a Jewish background. With Crohn’s, the inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract becomes chronic. The body’s immune system starts attacking this system. It’s considered an autoimmune disease.

Did you know, for some reason, that people who smoke tobacco are twice as likely to develop Crohn’s than nonsmokers? Perhaps smoking tobacco triggers something in…

Sometimes described as “the most excruciating pain known to humanity,” trigeminal neuralgia involves intense pain in the lower face and jaw. Sometimes the pain also includes the area around the nose and above the eye, too. What’s happening is the trigeminal nerve is irritated, and the person is experiencing an electric shock-like pain, typically on one side of their face. This nerve involves branches to the forehead, cheek and lower jaw. Obviously, this part of the body is extremely sensitive, and when a person experiences trigeminal neuralgia it’s a debilitating pain. Jokingly they might say, “Kill me now! Put…

Ask around and you’re likely to find out people you know and love are suffering with tinnitus. It’s quite common, with about 1 in 5 people dealing with the perception of noise or ringing in the ears. Interestingly, tinnitus isn’t a condition itself, but rather the symptom of an underlying condition. For some, it’s related to their age– the older they get, the more hearing loss they experience. Maybe they’ve had an ear injury or perhaps there’s something going wrong with their circulatory system. A lot of people assume tinnitus comes from attending too many overtly loud rock concerts…